Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Absinthe |
AbsintheNoun1. Aromatic herb of temperate Eurasia and North Africa having a bitter taste used in making the liqueur absinthe. 2. Strong green liqueur flavored with wormwood and anise. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "absinthe" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1862. (references) |
| Domain | Definition |
19th Century Satire | From two Latin words, ad, and sinistrum, meaning "to the bad." If in doubt, try one. (Old adage, "Absinthe makes the jag last longer)." Source: Foolish Dictionary, 1904. |
Dream Interpretation | To come under the influence of absinthe in dreams, denotes that you will lead a merry and foolish pace with innocent companions, and waste your inheritance in prodigal lavishness on the siren, selfish fancy. For a young woman to dream that she drinks absinthe with her lover warns her to resist his persuasions to illicit consummation of their love. If she dreams she is drunk, she will yield up her favors without strong persuasion. (This dream typifies that you are likely to waste your energies in pleasure.). Source: Ten Thousand Dreams Interpreted .... |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Absinthe is a drug containing the psychoactive substance thujone, in addition to alcohol. The source of thujone is wormwood, from whose scientific name (Artemisia absinthium) it derives its name. Absinthe has a pale-green color and tastes much like an anise-flavored liqueur, but with strongly bitter undertones. It was originally distilled, since a maceration of wormwood produces an extremely bitter drink. Additionally, it contains anise (often partially substituted with star anise), fennel, hyssop, melissa, and roman wormwood. Various recipes also include angelica root, sweet flag, dittany leaves, coriander, and other mountain herbs.
The distillation of wormwood first produces a colorless "alcoholate", and to this the well-known green colour of the beverage is imparted by steeping with the leaves of roman wormwood, hyssop, and melissa. Inferior varieties are made by means of essences or oils cold-mixed in alcohol, the distillation process being omitted.
Historically, there were four varieties of absinthe: ordinaire, demi-fine, fine, and supérieures or Swiss, the latter of which was of a higher alcoholic strength than the former. It can be colored green (which is done to add flavors) or left clear. The best absinthes contain 65 to 75% alcohol. It is said to improve very materially by storage. It is known that in the 19th century absinthe, like much food and drink of the time, absinthe was occationally adulterated by profiteers with copper, zinc, indigo, or other dye-stuffs to impart the green colour, but this was never done by the best distilleries. It was thought that excessive absinthe-drinking lead to effects which were specifically worse than those associated with over-indulgence in other forms of alcohol, creating the condition absinthisme. The wormwood extract is responsible for the drink containing a compound called thujone, which is an epileptic in extremely high doses, but far more than could be consumed by normal drinking. Most of the thujone is removed during the distillation process, but can remain in higher amounts in oils or when macerated, especially the plant stems, where thujone content is the highest. No modern scientific studies have been carried out to back the validity of earlier 19th century medical claims to absinthe's supposed dangers as a drink, apart from its high alcohol content and alcoholism in general.
After publicity about several violent crimes supposedly committed under the direct influence of the drink, along with a general tendency toward hard liquor consumption due to the wine shortage in France during the 1880s and 1890s, the temperance leagues and winemaker's associations effectively targeted absinthe's popularity as social menace and it was banned from sale and production in most countries by 1915. In the 1990s an importer realised that there was no UK law about its sale (it was never banned there) - other than the standard law on alcoholic beverages - and it became available again in the UK for the first time in nearly a century (though with a prohibitively high tax reflecting the high ethanol content). It had also never been banned in Spain or Portugal, where it continues to be made. Recent European Union laws have allowed absinthe and absinthe-like liquors to once again be made commercially, however it places strict controls on the thujone level.
Since absinthe production has moved from France to Central Europe, the non-French spelling of "Absinth" has also been adopted.
This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica.
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Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Absinthe."
Synonyms: AbsintheSynonyms: absinth (n), common wormwood (n), lad's love (n), old man (n). (additional references) |
Crosswords: Absinthe |
| English words defined with "absinthe": absinthe oil, Artemis pontica, Artemisia absinthium ♦ common wormwood ♦ lad's love ♦ old man ♦ pastis ♦ Roman wormwood ♦ Vermuth ♦ wormwood oil. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "absinthe": BACCHUS, Bitter as Gall ♦ LOUIS V. (references) |
| Non-English Usage: "Absinthe" is also a word in the following language with English translations in parentheses. French (absinth, absinthe). |
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | Absinthe is the aphrodisiac of the self (Dracula; writing credit: James V. Hart) | |
Movie/TV Titles | Absinthe (1914) La Bonne absinthe (1899) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title |
Books | |
Music |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit | Thumbnail | Description & Credit |
 | Old Absinthe House, New Orleans, La. Credit: Library of Congress. |  | Absinthe House, New Orleans. Credit: Library of Congress. |
 | Absinthe robette / Privat Livemont. Credit: Library of Congress. | ||
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits. | |||
| "Absinthe" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 85.71% of the time. "Absinthe" is used about 7 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 85.71% | 6 | 143,867 |
| Noun (proper) | 14.29% | 1 | 339,140 |
| Total | 100.00% | 7 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
Expression using "absinthe": absinthe oil. Additional references. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Language | Translations for "absinthe"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Albanian | glikanxo (absinth, aniseed). (various references) | |
Arabic | الأفسنتين شراب مسكر. (various references) | |
Bulgarian | абсент (absinth), пелин (absinth, sagebrush). (various references) | |
Chinese | 苦艾. (various references) | |
Czech | absint. (various references) | |
Danish | absinth (absinth, worm wood, wormwood), malurt (absinth, worm wood, wormwood). (various references) | |
Dutch | absint (absinth). (various references) | |
French | absinthe (absinth). (various references) | |
German | Wermut (vermouth, wormwood), Absinth (absinth). (various references) | |
Greek | άψινθος, αψέντι (absinth), αψίνθιο (absinth, wormwood), αψίνθι, αψίνθοσ (absinth). (various references) | |
Hebrew | אפסי טין, אפס תין. (various references) | |
Hungarian | abszint (absinth). (various references) | |
Italian | assenzio (absinth). (various references) | |
Japanese Kanji | アフリカ民族会議 (a priori, abnormal, abseiling, absolutism, abstract, abstract art, abstraction, adding sounds to a soundtrack after a film has been made, African National Congress, Afro, Afro-Cuban rhythm, Afro-hair, ahead, ANC, APL, application, application program, application software, apply, approach, approach light, approach shot, apres-guerre, apricot, dubbing, lowering on a rope, postlooping, postrecording, postsynchronization). (various references) | |
Japanese Katakana | アブサン . (various references) | |
Pig Latin | absintheay.(various references) | |
Portuguese | absinto (wormwood). (various references) | |
Romanian | absint (absinth, bitters, wormwood wine), pelin (absinth, Wormwood). (various references) | |
Russian | абсент (absinth). (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | pelen (absinth, wormwood). (various references) | |
Spanish | ajenjo (absinth, southernwood, Wormwood). (various references) | |
Turkish | apsent (absinth, bitters), pelin (absinth, mugwort, Wormwood). (various references) | |
Ukrainian | абсент (absinth), полин (absinth, sagebrush, tarragon, wormseed). (various references) | |
Vietnamese | cây ngải đắng tinh dầu apxin rượu apxin (absinth), cây apxin (absinth). (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
| Language | Period | Translations |
| Latin | 500 BCE-Modern | Artemisia absinthium. (various references) |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "absinthe": absinthes. (additional references) | |
| |
"Absinthe" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: Abiathar, abrinthe, Absa'tze, absenth, absinths, absinthum, absynth, absynthe, absynthii, asbinthe. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-b-e-h-i-n-s-t" | |
-1 letter: absinth, banshie, banties, basinet, henbits, sheitan, sthenia. | |
-2 letters: absent, banish, bathes, binate, habits, hasten, henbit, sabine, saithe, shanti, snathe, tenias, thanes, theins, tineas, tisane. | |
-3 letters: abets, anise, antes, antis, ashen, bahts, baith, baits, banes, basin, baste, bates, bathe, baths, beans, beast, beats, bents, betas, beths, bines, bints, bites, entia, etnas, habit, haets, hanse. | |
| Words containing the letters "a-b-e-h-i-n-s-t" | |
+1 letter: absinthes, thebaines. | |
+2 letters: aitchbones, banishment, branchiest, breathings, hibernates, inbreathes, inhabiters, reinhabits. | |
+3 letters: abolishment, banishments, breathiness, habiliments, hebetations, hibernators, stenobathic, tarnishable. | |
+4 letters: abolishments, blandishment, botherations, establishing, habitualness, hibernations, inhospitable, paintbrushes, stablishment. | |
+5 letters: analphabetics, analphabetism, bantamweights, blandishments, breathinesses, establishment, ethnobotanies, ethnobotanist, featherbrains, habitableness, heartburnings, hebraizations, inexhaustible, inexhaustibly, inhabitancies, rehabilitants, stablishments, technophobias, thinkableness, thrombokinase, unestablished. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Crosswords 4. Usage: Modern | 5. Usage: Commercial 6. Images: Photo Album 7. Usage Frequency 8. Expressions | 9. Expressions: Internet 10. Translations: Modern 11. Translations: Ancient 12. Derivations | 13. Anagrams 14. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
